Version

From The BOOK OF ISAIAH 39: 1-8 

Hezekiah of Judah had been gravely ill but survived.                                  The king of Babylon sent a delegation to Hezekiah.                       They took a letter written by the king himself and a gift                                            which he’d personally selected. 
Hezekiah showed the Babylonian delegation his house                                   and the precious things therein. The silver, the gold.                                      The spices, the rare and expensive ointments. The adornments.                                                 The house and his dominion over the house. Hezekiah showed it all.
When Isaiah the prophet son of Amoz next met Hezekiah                        he asked: “Who were those men and where did                                                            they come from?”    
Hezekiah told Isaiah:                                        “They were a delegation come                                                                   from Babylon.”               

Isaiah asked: “What did you show them?”
“The house and everything precious within the house.                                       The silver, the gold. The spices, the rare and expensive ointments.                 The adornments.  All that is in the house, I showed them.             And my dominion over all.”

Then Isaiah the prophet said:                                                 
           “Hear these words    from the Lord of Hosts. The day nears                                                  when
all that is in your house, all that your fathers gathered up and laid in store, will be
taken from you


                                              and carried to Babylon, so that nothing precious                                  will be found in your house. Nothing                                           
will remain.”


“And your sons yet to be, those you will beget,                        they shall be taken from you, and they shall be made                              eunuchs in the court of the king of Babylon.”
Hezekiah replied to Isaiah:                                                              “Good are the words you have spoken.                                            Surely there will be peace and understanding                              
all the days of my life.”

--- A free adaptation of chapter 39 from the Book of Isaiah.  My approach is based upon a reading of that text as found in the  King James Version.  I also consulted the New Oxford Annotated Bible/New Revised Standard Version with the Apocrypha (Oxford, 2010).   The lineation above does not conform to my original intentions. I tried to match what I'd written on my computer screen before copying it into the blog post above, finding ultimately that I could not do so.  If you are a poet you will know how inhospitable e-blogger is to the creative use of space and unconventional employment of line. The poet is no less burdened by pain than any other person in this wretched age, but there are irritations peculiar to the efforts of writing a poem: situating a poem on a blog is one such irritation. Perhaps one day the activities of the poet will be given a measure of accommodation in this matter.